It was a nice day on the Rift. Sunny and warm, exactly the kind of spring morning that you wouldn't want to spend fighting. As a consequence, both the champions and the summoners were easier to distract than usual. They had to wait ten minutes for one of the summoners to even show up and Twitch and Zac were so absorbed in their chitchat that they almost walked into the red team's teleport station instead of the blue one.
Orianna had been mostly immune to the distractions, but she took fascination in analyzing the changed behavior of her fellow champions. For example, she overheard Zac planning to take the children out for a picnic and doing his best to convince a reluctant Twitch to accompany them.
"It will be fun. I'll bring some of that cheese that you like and you could use some fresh air," said the Secret Weapon in a trademark Happy Voice. After her previous observations, Orianna didn't doubt that Zac would enjoy the outing, but her personal notes through 158 to 227 showed that he had a tendency to display theatrically exaggerated emotions. She deduced that it was a mechanism to compensate for his limited facial expressions.
"No! I don't do fresh air. I don't do fresh anything," rebuffed the rat, its whiskers twitching in annoyance.
"There will be other people at the park you know," Zac added in a hushed tone, resorting to a different tactic. "Couples even. Jayce bragged about landing a date with Caitlyn this morning. If you happened to, I don't know, sneak away for a little while to put salt in her tea, I couldn't do anything to stop you."
"Now that's what I would call fun! I might consider doing it, just for the sake of our friendship you know. I wouldn't suffer through a whole afternoon of fresh air and, hrmph, sunshine – he shuddered in disgust - for anyone else."
"Of course Twitch. You are a buddy."
Orianna would have continued her observation – this was a fascinating addition to her logs already – when she got almost run over by something big and purple.
She turned to stare straight into the gaping maw of the newest Voidborn addition to the League, the beast called Rek'Sai.
"My apologies," came a sinister voice from the other side of the beast and Malzahar floated into her line of sight. "The ticking of your machinery fascinates her."
Rek'Sai let out a series of clicking sounds, pushing its head closer to Orianna. Curious, not malicious, but the attention was unwanted nonetheless.
Malzahar put all of his weight into pushing the beast away, trying to steer it away from the Lady of Clockwork.
"Go ahead, please. She will behave once under the control of the summoner, but if anything goes wrong, I have a teleportation spell ready." The Prophet's burning eyes bore into Orianna's own and she didn't feel like arguing.
"That is considerate of you," she droned with a stiff bow and made her way to the teleportation point with rapid steps.
Orianna put her jungler out of her mind for the beginning of the match – her lane against Azir was going decently, but she could tell that the Shuriman wasn't giving it his all. Her summoner was giving far too aggressive orders that had put her close to dying on two separate occasions within the first five minutes and he let her walk away without giving the killing blow both times.
"You are not taking this seriously," she noted when the emperor sent two of his soldiers far, choosing to farm over a clear opportunity to attack.
"This is but a training match to test the Burrower's obedience," answered the Shuriman and with a lazy wave of his hand sent a soldier to the brush to check for a possible gank. It would be logical for the jungler to visit their lane as he had pushed Orianna far under her turret. "I do not plan to waste my energy on… what was the expression Sivir used? Ah yes. Tryharding."
"I was not aware you are updating your language database," Orianna said, getting in a nice hit with the Ball. The Shuriman had a point; there was not much reason to take the match too seriously under the circumstances, so she might as well use the opportunity to fine-tune her conversational modules.
"I try to catch up to the current times. An Emperor needs to be an exemplar of his people," Azir said in a tone that she categorized under 'conversational'.
Back and forth, they traded blows and words, but mostly words. She got occasional orders from her summoner, but he must have come to the same conclusion as the champions and mostly kept his interference to notifying her about the position of her teammates. The beast first ganked top, then roamed bot to protect Ezreal and Thresh them from Zac who had set up camp there. Orianna was tempted to join the 3v3 fight, but Azir made certain that she was always below half health which made the endeavor far too risky.
At long last her summoner gave a heads up that Rek'Sai was coming mid. Azir had pushed far and didn't bother to put a ward in the upper bush for several minutes, which made it as ideal a gank as possible.
"Now!" came the order and Orianna commanded her Ball forward the same time Rek'Sai burrowed into the lane for a knock up. The sudden attack caught Azir unaware, but the Emperor was a slippery one. She managed to clip him with her Shockwave, but he used his Shifting Sands to move away.
Caught on the other side of a minion wave, Orianna was too far to pursue him, but Rek'Sai wasn't and her summoner had previously reassured her that the beast was strong enough to dive after the Shuriman. As a logical action, she commanded the Ball to shield the creature, expecting it to go right after the fleeing enemy.
She didn't expect it to catch the Ball in its maw and turn back towards her, Azir all but forgotten. She stared backing away from the beast, but her tower wouldn't protect her from her own teammate…
"Malzahar. Immediate assistance required," She asked in the emergency channel and within a second heard the reassuring sound of an incoming teleportation. Still, even as its master appeared, the beast kept advancing on her, its tail thumping heavily on the ground.
"Rek'Sai, back!" Malzahar barked the order, but the beast only let out a whine and kept coming. If anything, it had sped up.
Orianna's back hit the tower. She was cornered and without the Ball, she had no means of self defense left and the creature just kept coming closer and closer.
About two meters from her and her impending system failure, the Burrower suddenly stopped dead in its tracks. It tilted its head to the side, tail still beating a lazy beat on the ground and then abruptly let the Ball out of its maw. Orianna's eyes automatically followed as the sphere fell and her jaw dropped in shock when the beast whined again and nudged the Ball towards her with its head.
"I think she wants to… play?" Malzahar suggested, just as flabbergasted as Orianna. Now that she had enough behavior samples, she could see it as well: the wagging tail, the lifted front paw, typical 'play-with-me' dog behavior.
As an experiment, she commanded the Ball to lift up and sent it flying to the distance with a 'whoosh' sound. Rek'Sai, nightmare of the desert and the most vicious beast known in Runeterra, had chased after it with such abandon that she almost tripped over her own legs. Within seconds, she had the Ball secure in her maw again and trotted back to drop it in front of Orianna, ready for another round.
"Good… girl? Malzahar suggested hesitantly, the phrase sounding atrociously out of place coming from his mouth.
And that was the point when Azir started laughing uncontrollably.
This is how the rest of the teams found them when they came to check on their mid lane: Malzahar so shocked that he forgot about floating and was standing on the ground, Orianna obediently if a bit mechanically – no pun intended - playing fetch with an ecstatic Rek'Sai and Azir laughing so hard that he needed the support of his soldiers to stay upright.
After that, the summoners declared the match a draw and finished early – something to do with "not even the animal taking it seriously any more". Nobody minded it much; at least this way they had more time to spend in the park, enjoying the sunshine without the danger of impending, if strictly temporal, death. They even convinced Orianna to come with them to the park and she put up only superficial resistance.
This is one of those special days, she decided as she sent the Ball flying, much to the joy of one very happy Void Burrower.
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